NEMA-YE NAZDIK | ABBAS KIAROSTAMI
1990
IRAN | PERSIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES | FORMAT: 35MM | 98 MINUTES
This delightful puzzle inspires a study of its own creation. By the end of the movie, a man who is acting the role of "famous film director" and the family who went along with hopes of starring in his next film become part of something nearly like a "fairy tale that comes true." The imposter becomes the star of this movie and has an opportunity to be heard: in front of a judge and the documentary camera, he makes an authentic and heartfelt plea for his and all poor people's destitute and low-class social status. The family, once duped, is eventually enlisted to re-enact their roles. The real story of fraud becomes the fictionalized (fraudulent?) document of the movie. Brilliant. - dp
From the Lincoln Center Film website:
A young man introduces himself as Mohsen Makhmalbaf, among the most celebrated directors of 1990s Iranian cinema, and enters intimately into the life of a family, and enters intimately into the life of a family under the pretext that he's scouting locations for a new film project. Deeply suspicious of the stranger, the father investigates his houseguest, leading to the con man's exposure and arrest. At this stage, Kiarostami and his real-life film crew enter the story to film the Makhmalbaf imposter's trial. Events preceding the young man's arrest are dramatized and reconstructed, but with the real people "playing" themselves. A masterful exploration of the nature of truth and cinematic illusion with a distinctly off-beat sense of humor, Close-Up has been widely hailed as one of Kiarostami's crowning achievements and one of the greatest films of the 1990s. "The greatest documentary on filmmaking I have ever seen."—Werner Herzog
